Inside Out 2 opened on June 14. I’ve watched it twice. In the briefest of brief plot summaries, the movie portrays the emotional struggles happening inside our heads as we make our way through the world. Told through a 13 year old Riley, she is pitted against a host of new, unpredictable feelings.
The movie hits the mark, especially with the anxiety character. Anxiety has one job: handle the safety of the individual by protecting it against all real and imagined dangers, a truly monumental task. However, anxiety has a tendency to overreach and do this too well, squeezing out signals from our other emotions–anger, joy, fear. When this happens, as it does to Riley, we might act in ways not aligned with who we want to be and isolate ourselves rom the moment. It’s no joke, anxiety is big and scary at times, but seeing what anxiety really is: an orange, stringy haired and gangly character, you begin to grasp how ill-equipped it is to handle that much responsibility. Kinda like telling a 17 year old they run Microsoft now.
Without giving too much away, Riley gets caught in a massive anxiety storm. It’s an experience we all share, having, at least to some degree, felt inferior, stupid, out of touch, or a fraud. I definitely have. In those moments rather than picking ourselves up, we bury those feelings under terrible self talk. For instance my go-to is telling myself how big of an idiot I am.
But I’ve learned a trick. When I get an anxiety overload, I ask myself this: what if I’m not an idiot? Not particularly mind blowing, but it does two things. First, heavy anxiety strangles your ability to think straight. You believe a limited number of options exist to tackle what’s in front of you, and acting on one often leaves you worse off. Basically, the options for ‘an idiot’ are limited. The counter question short circuits the anxiety storm. It’s because you introduce doubt, and even if the relief is temporary, anxiety has lost its vice grip over the situation, forced to back off and consider alternatives.
The second piece is where the magic happens. In throwing anxiety a slider, a gap opens between what’s happening and your reaction to it, kicking your imagination into gear. ‘What if I’m not an idiot’ can’t hang out unanswered. Your imagination can’t help itself and comes up with all the ways a Not Idiot could solve a problem. Are all the potential ideas good or even feasible? Hell, no! But that’s not the point. The point is to disrupt my anxiety just enough in order for the imagination to drop in and get to work.
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